LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY nebris)

From CounterPunch

By STEPHEN LENDMAN
April 23, 2007

Chris Hedges is a journalist who for two decades was a foreign correspondent for the New York Times spending much of his time reporting from conflict zones in El Salvador, the Middle East and from Serbia covering the Balkan wars of the 1990s that divided and destroyed a country under the guise of humanitarian intervention providing cover for naked imperialism. There it allowed NATO (meaning the US) to expand into Central and Eastern Europe to keep predatory capitalism on the march for markets, resources and cheap labor everywhere using wars to get them and eliminate "uncooperative" heads of state like Slobodan Milosevic who was kidnapped, Mafia/Mossad style, by the ICTY kangaroo court in the Hague, hung out to dry when he got there, and in the end effectively or, in fact, murdered to shut him up and prevent ugly truths coming out about what the conflict was really about and who the real criminals were.

The wars and subsequent show-trials had nothing to do with myths about it fed us by Western media. Those wanting the truth can find it in excellent books like Diana Johnstone's Fools' Crusade; the extensive research and writings of Edward Herman, Noam Chomsky, Michael Parenti, law professor Michael Mandel; and the newest book out on the subject titled Travesty: The Trial of Slobodan Milosevic and the Corruption of International Justice by British journalist John Laughland. Edward Herman wrote a superb review of the book in the April, 2007 issue of Z Magazine now available in which he pointedly says "the rules of the (illegally constituted) ICTY (established by the US and UK) stood Nuremberg on its head" and Laughland states "instead of applying existing international law, the ICTY has effectively overturned it" to hide NATO's crimes and allow more of the same playing out now in Iraq, Afghanistan and Palestine.

( The Christian Right supports these type crimes and motives for them readers will understand from Hedges' new book... )

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY sunfell)

It's a small thing, but still significant. The Miami Herald reports that the "Center for Reclaiming America" has closed its doors.

Bringing an end to ambitious goals that included raising $2 million to launch a Capitol Hill lobbying arm, opening a dozen regional offices and recruiting activists in all 435 congressional districts, the Fort Lauderdale-based Center for Reclaiming America has shut its doors.

The conservative organization, part of the Rev. James D. Kennedy's Coral Ridge Ministries, let its eight employees go last week. Coral Ridge also closed its Capitol Hill-based Center for Christian Statesmanship, founded in 1995 to convert lawmakers to evangelical Christianity.

Brian Fisher, executive vice president at Coral Ridge Ministries, said the closings are part of a larger effort to redefine the ministry's mission.

''We believe that by streamlining the operations we will be able to return to our core focus,'' he said.

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY sunfell)

As usual, Jews on First has one of the most comprehensive looks at the upcoming "National Day of Prayer". It is an exclusive True Believers™ Only gathering that is sponsored by Focus on the Family:

Major figures on the Christian Right are pulling out all the stops to simulate an official, government-endorsed national prayer day scheduled for Thursday, May 3rd.

Focus on the Family, regarded as the nation's most powerful religious right group, effectively controls the day's events, according to news reports and interfaith non-profits.

On Monday, Focus on the Family Chairman James Dobson thanked his followers for successfully badgering New York Governor Eliot Spitzer into becoming the 50th governor to sign a proclamation for the National Day of Prayer.

Dobson's wife chairs the self-appointed National Day of Prayer Task Force. The group is organizing prayer events in and near official buildings and schools to give the impression of government-endorsed religion. Interlinked websites promoting this year's event (listed on the task force home page pictured here) also include web pages on evangelizing military personnel. We've provided examples and links at the end of this report.

One of the interlinked websites operated by the pseudo-official Presidential Prayer Team promotes a "National Observance" from Washington DC, bidding the public to: "[j]oin with us as we celebrate America's 56th annual National Day of Prayer from our nation's capitol." James Dobson will be one of the presenters.

( Purposeful exclusion of other faith traditions )

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY ncalrod)

Ok here is a question to any one who thinks they have an answer. I have heard a lot of speculation as to what direction the United States of America is going in and what its future holds.

Some people believe that things will continue to limp along both in the US and in Iraq pretty much as they have been as long as Bush is in the office. They believe that in 2008 President Bush will voluntarily step down at the end of his term and he and his cronies will willingly relinquish the reigns of power to who ever wins the 08 election. Some time after that (years most likely) the US will figure out a way to get out of Iraq and the US can start getting back to where it was before this nightmare started. Basically they believe the pendulum that swings back and forth from liberal to conservative will swing liberal for a time as it has in the past.

Then there is another camp of people who believe that the current state of affairs is far more serious than most people recognize. They think that we are witnessing the death throws of democracy, civil liberties, and most other “human rights” in the US. They believe that the “war on terror” will be the jumping off point for a new totalitarian government that will last long after 08 comes and goes. They believe that the powers granted to the government to fight the war will continue to grow as our remaining freedoms dwindle proportionally.  Some people even believe that the current government will declare a state of emergency following some kind of disaster or traumatic event and will use that fear to “temporarily” postpone the elections and “temporarily” suspend some of the rights and freedoms we have left. Further they believe that these temporary measures are anything but temporary and will form the basis of a new totalitarian (perhaps even fascist) state that exists in a constant state of war forever at the mercy of fear. Some people who believe this is our future also look on with concern at the vast numbers of evangelical Christians in the military in positions of power who have openly stated that they feel that their duty is first to their god, second to the government and a distant third to the people. They see the wall of separation of church and state crumbling and the Bush and his cronies establishing stronger ties with the far right religious conservatives who them selves believe that it is their destiny to return the US to a fictional golden age where the county is a Christian nation all marching in lock step with the government to whom they have given their support.

The first group views the second as a paranoid bunch of conspiracy theorists who see plots and subterfuge lurking in every corner and that it is all but impossible for there to be any potential extension of the administration much less a total take over and conversion to a totalitarian state. They say the people would not allow it and more importantly the military no matter how conservative or religious would ever support a move to extend the duration of the administration much less any sort of coup d'état that would end in a dictatorship.

The second group thinks that those in the first group are a bunch of naive idealists who can’t see the danger looming for all the ideals and good wishes they carry.  They think that the cries of “it could never happen here, it could never happen to us” sound eerily familiar and that the end is a lot closer than any one wants to believe.  They believe they see the US we all knew crumbling and a terrifying new form is emerging from its ashes.

I am by no means saying that these are the only two schools of thought or that they have to be exactly as I said they were, I am just pointing out two divergent opinions some groups of people hold and asking for input or thoughts on which if either of these schools of thought are correct. 

Thoughts?

(cross posted to a few different places)

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY cheap_laugh)

Edited for Clarity
Once more, their chosen reality pipe has lapped our satire.Don Larsen, chairman of legislative District 65 for the Utah County Republican Party, had submitted a resolution warning that Satan's minions want to eliminate national borders and do away with sovereignty.

Satan, it seems, is controlling those darned illegals. and Democrats. Perhaps Larson's own ha-Satan is at work here assisting Mr. Larson (in looking like a complete nutcase):

Illegal aliens are in control of the media, and working in tandem with Democrats, are trying to "destroy Christian America" and replace it with "a godless new world order -- and that is not extremism, that is fact,"

"I agree with 95 percent of this resolution but it has some language that is divisive and not inspiring other people to its vision," he said. "This only gives fodder to the liberal media to give negative attention to the Republican Party."

"If the Democrats take over the country, we will be dead, and we will have abortion and partial-birth abortion and the Republican Party will go into extinction," he said. "Nancy Pelosi and the ACLU would oppose this (resolution)."

Powered by ScribeFire.

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY sunfell)

bradhicks takes up an intersting subthread in the Baptist Church- opposition to the 'emerging church' and the imposition of unsound doctorine upon the various congregations.

"Theologically Sound", but Opposed by Southern Baptists is a must-read, in depth article that explores how a Christian sect can find themselves beached by unsound theology.

...I proved (to my satisfaction, at least) that using the term "Faustian bargain" to describe the relationship between Christian fundamentalism and the Republican Party is painfully literal, that starting in 1964 the leaders of the top fundamentalist seminaries began the process of replacing Christian doctrines with explicitly Satanic ones out of self defense, in order to more closely ally themselves and their followers with the anti-Communist caucus of the Republican Party. I demonstrated that the gospel of social reaction and corporate greed that was taught in those seminaries, and that is now enforced by church leaders who graduated from those seminaries (or laymen whose pastors did) is a false gospel that, if the actual Christian Bible is to be believed, is sending them and their deceived followers straight to Hell.

Some of you may have doubted me. In particular, you may have doubted that the leaders who made these decisions knew that the gospel they were preaching, and that they have spent decades evicting from their denominations any preacher that wouldn't conform to, is anti-Christian. If you still doubt this, then take a good look at Post-Dispatch religion reporter Tim Townsend's April 2nd interview with the chairman of the Missouri Baptist Convention, Roger Moran, "Missouri's Most Powerful Baptist Takes On the 'Emerging Church.'" In particular, observe the final paragraphs, where Moran admits that he is fighting hard against a group of local Christian evangelists who are "theologically conservative," that is to say fellow Biblical literalists (more so than him, it turns out), successful in reaching people for Christ and bringing people back to the church who've left it. Even Moran admits that what they preach, and practice, "may be theologically sound" and that "they have a passion for reaching people for Christ ... and I think they do." And that's what he opposes. [emphasis Brad's] He opposes them because what they're teaching is God's actual word, not his personal gospel.

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY sunfell)

So, how do you take over a government and turn it into a theocracy? Well, you 'train up' your young to become 'foot soldiers' and TrueBelievers™ and send them into government service.

Monica Goodling, who has pleaded the Fifth in the Attorney General scandal, is one of those foot soldiers.

Talk to Action has an article about these people:

Goodling earned her law degree from Regent, an institution founded by Robertson "to produce Christian leaders who will make a difference, who will change the world." Helping to purge politically disloyal federal prosecutors is just one way Goodling has helped fulfill Robertson's revolutionary goals.

Regent has assiduously cultivated close ties to the administration and its Republican outriders. Gonzales's predecessor, John Ashcroft, is currently cooling his heels at Regent as the school's "Distinguished Professor of Law and Government." Christian right super-lawyer Jay Sekulow, who also teaches at Regent and shares a Washington office with Ashcroft, participated in regular briefings with the White House on court appointments. In 1998, he leased a private jet through Regent to fly Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia to speak at the school's 20th anniversary (Though Sekulow regularly argues cases before the Supreme Court, he apparently did not view hobnobbing with Scalia as an ethical breach).

When the Bush administration came into power, it looked to Regent for a reliable pool of well-groomed Republican ideologues eager to wage the culture war from the inside. The former dean of Regent's Robertson School of Government, Kay Coles James, was promptly installed as the Director of the Office of Personnel Management.

According to her bio, from 2001 to 2005, James was "President Bush's principal advisor in matters of personnel administration for the 1.8 million members of the Federal civil service." In that role, James rolled back the power of unions in the federal sector. Now that she's out of government, James is back among her Christian right allies, appearing frequently as a guest on James Dobson's Focus on the Family radio show.

Another Regent figure who impacted White House policy is Jim David, the current Assistant Dean for Administration in the Robertson School of Government. David was inserted in the Justice Department in 2003 as yet another sop to the Christian right; he served as deputy director of the department's Task Force for the Faith-Based & Community Initiative.

Since leaving the DoJ, David has spent a considerable portion of his spare time writing opinion pieces that appear on Regent's website. One of his most noteable screeds, penned in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, described a bright spot in the destruction of New Orleans. "We do not grieve, however, for the flooded and destroyed sex clubs that filled men with lust and degraded women," David wrote. "We do not miss the casinos that preyed upon individuals whose lack of self-control deprived families of needed food and shelter. We do not lament the destruction of voodoo stores prevalent in New Orleans before the flood."

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY greymalkini)

Just came across this: http://www.conservapedia.com/Main_Page from a poliblog I read with this bit of analyis for it:
A lot of the material that’s showing up on Conservapedia pages is being cribbed directly from A Beka texbooks.

A Beka textbooks are published by the same people who run Pensacola Christian College, a school that is so far out there, theologically and educationally speaking, that it cannot even get accredited. Kids who graduate from this school have a degree that is worth absolutely nothing.

This “Conservapedia” is part of the effort Dominionists are making to set up a sort of “shadow-America” or “shadow-reality” alongside what already exists. We have schools that teach children about reality in all of its complicated messiness, they have “schools” that teach children about the bright, clear dividing line in their dichotomous, black and white universe between God’s good and Satan’s evil. We have news organizations that deal - with varying levels of skill - with how screwed up the world is, they have Fox News. We have colleges where people are forced to confront ideas they disagree with (no matter what they come to college believing) in the belief that having your ideas challenged makes you a better thinker and a better person, they have Pensacola Christian College and Patrick Henry College.

None of this would really be a problem if it weren’t for the fact that their alternate reality is starting to take over our real reality. Go take a look at how many students from Patrick Henry College end up becoming Congressional staffers of one sort or another.

Sorry to keep banging this particular drum around here, but it just keeps coming up. Probably because the conservative theocratic Christians are winning the culture wars.

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY fizzyland)

( Complete quotes here )

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY wyldraven)

Yesterday, on T2A, we were introduced to The Purpose Driven Life Takers. An ultra-violent video game, Left Behind: Eternal Forces, based on scenes from the first four novels in the Left Behind novel series, puts you "on a mission - both a religious mission and a military mission -- to convert or kill Catholics, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, gays, and anyone who advocates the separation of church and state". It's to be rated T for Teens, meaning it is targeted at the 13-19 year old age group, and is "slated for release by October 2006 in advance of the Christmas shopping rush".

You can read another article on this travesty here: So Much For Rick Warren Being a Warm-and-Fuzzy Evangelical.

This is NOT what Christianity is about. Period, end of sentence. It's just so sad to see such a great man's philosophy so seriously corrupted.

You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the greatest and first commandment. And the second is like it, You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend the whole law and the prophets. (Matthew 22:37ff)

wyldraven

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY keith_dragon) Story:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12835020/

Here's another line drawn in the sand between freedom and dominionism.

I found this particularly interesting because it focuses on what is defined as family. Yet, I wonder if the city would enforce a Common Law marriage if the man decided to leave. 

From the following article in the South Florida Sun-Sentinel:
( A new case of religiously motivated child abuse--warning, potentially triggering to walkaways )

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY sunfell)

This NYT book review is a must-read. I want to get the book, too...

Although Phillips is scathingly critical of what he considers the dangerous policies of the Bush administration, he does not spend much time examining the ideas and behavior of the president and his advisers. Instead, he identifies three broad and related trends — none of them new to the Bush years but all of them, he believes, exacerbated by this administration's policies — that together threaten the future of the United States and the world. One is the role of oil in defining and, as Phillips sees it, distorting American foreign and domestic policy. The second is the ominous intrusion of radical Christianity into politics and government. And the third is the astonishing levels of debt — current and prospective — that both the government and the American people have been heedlessly accumulating. If there is a single, if implicit, theme running through the three linked essays that form this book, it is the failure of leaders to look beyond their own and the country's immediate ambitions and desires so as to plan prudently for a darkening future.

***

Phillips is especially passionate in his discussion of the second great force that he sees shaping contemporary American life — radical Christianity and its growing intrusion into government and politics. The political rise of evangelical Christian groups is hardly a secret to most Americans after the 2004 election, but Phillips brings together an enormous range of information from scholars and journalists and presents a remarkably comprehensive and chilling picture of the goals and achievements of the religious right.

He points in particular to the Southern Baptist Convention, once a scorned seceding minority of the American Baptist Church but now so large that it dominates not just Baptism itself but American Protestantism generally. The Southern Baptist Convention does not speak with one voice, but almost all of its voices, Phillips argues, are to one degree or another highly conservative. On the far right is a still obscure but, Phillips says, rapidly growing group of "Christian Reconstructionists" who believe in a "Taliban-like" reversal of women's rights, who describe the separation of church and state as a "myth" and who call openly for a theocratic government shaped by Christian doctrine. A much larger group of Protestants, perhaps as many as a third of the population, claims to believe in the supposed biblical prophecies of an imminent "rapture" — the return of Jesus to the world and the elevation of believers to heaven.

Prophetic Christians, Phillips writes, often shape their view of politics and the world around signs that charlatan biblical scholars have identified as predictors of the apocalypse — among them a war in Iraq, the Jewish settlement of the whole of biblical Israel, even the rise of terrorism. He convincingly demonstrates that the Bush administration has calculatedly reached out to such believers and encouraged them to see the president's policies as a response to premillennialist thought. He also suggests that the president and other members of his administration may actually believe these things themselves, that religious belief is the basis of policy, not just a tactic for selling it to the public. Phillips's evidence for this disturbing claim is significant, but not conclusive.

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY bluemoontide)

Here's a link to an article I found originally through Witchvox. It discusses the goals and aims of a group called Christian Exodus, who plan to move thousands of people (currently they only have a few dozen) people to South Carolina by 2008. As the Wiccan in the article points out, though, South Carolinans do not easily accept outsiders, Christian or not, so their plan may not be as well thought out as thought (no offense to S. Carolinans on the list!).

another State takeover?

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY kalibex)

A Dominionist candidate for Texas Governor (Caution: may trigger - explicit campaign site)

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY dulcinbradbury)

SECOND REGULAR SESSION

House Concurrent Resolution No. 13

93RD GENERAL ASSEMBLY

4572L.02I

Whereas, our forefathers of this great nation of the United States recognized a Christian God and used the principles afforded to us by Him as the founding principles of our nation; and

Whereas, as citizens of this great nation, we the majority also wish to exercise our constitutional right to acknowledge our Creator and give thanks for the many gifts provided by Him; and

Whereas, as elected officials we should protect the majority's right to express their religious beliefs while showing respect for those who object; and

Whereas, we wish to continue the wisdom imparted in the Constitution of the United States of America by the founding fathers; and

Whereas, we as elected officials recognize that a Greater Power exists above and beyond the institutions of mankind:

Now, therefore, be it resolved by the members of the House of Representatives of the Ninety-third General Assembly, Second Regular Session, the Senate concurring therein, that we stand with the majority of our constituents and exercise the common sense that voluntary prayer in public schools and religious displays on public property are not a coalition of church and state, but rather the justified recognition of the positive role that Christianity has played in this great nation of ours, the United States of America.

http://www.house.mo.gov/bills061/biltxt/intro/HCR0013I.htm

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY ellid)

The nullification of the Constitution, that is.

http://www.kmov.com/topstories/stories/030206ccklrKmovreligionbill.7d361c3f.html

I don't even know how to begin.

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY sesby)

A class at Bell Shoals Baptist Church in Florida embraces an alternate history that advocates the United States as a nation by Christians for Christians.

The curriculum:

- Our Godly Heritage

- Our Founding Fathers and Original Intent

- Educational Revisionism

- Christian's Responsibility to Culture

- Understanding the Homosexual Lifestyle and Agenda, Part I

- Understanding the Homosexual Lifestyle and Agenda, Part II

- Protecting Traditional Family Values

- Anti-Christian Bigotry

- Sanctity of Life

- The Religious and Political Origins of Thanksgiving

- "What Is Rama-hanu-kwanz-mas?" Keeping Christ in Christmas


More, from the story in the St. Petersbug Times:

"John Stemberger (a guest speaker) is a lawyer from Orlando. His spare time goes toward Florida Family Action, a conservative lobbying group. Stemberger's topic tonight is homosexuals and their agenda.

"We find ourselves living in an age where there's no truth at all, according to secularists," Stemberger tells the class.

No one, he says, is saying that homosexuals shouldn't have a right to vote, a right to sell property. "This is about special rights."

Namely, marriage. Once gays can marry, he said, they will want to adopt, too.

"Now the picture is not two guys in holy matrimony, in bed together, so to speak. Now the picture is three little children sandwiched in between them."

"What are two lesbian moms going to teach a little girl about how to love a man?" Stemberger asks.

"Nothing," someone calls out.

"They have nothing to offer these children," Stemberger says.

Then he says, "Can we just pray for a second?"

"Father," he begins as the students bow their heads, "We want to be clothed with grace. We want to be clothed with humility. . . . There is nothing in us that should be self-righteous, that should be judgmental."

Read the whole story at http://sptimes.com/2006/02/24/Brandontimes/In_God_they_trust.shtml

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY nebris)

~Religious fanaticism in American foreign policy

LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY cheap_laugh)

x-posted to cheap_laugh

Hackett calls it: Religious right=Terrorists

"The Republican Party has been hijacked by the religious fanatics that, in my opinion, aren't a whole lot different than Osama bin Laden and a lot of the other religious nuts around the world," he said. "The challenge is for the rest of us moderate Americans and citizens of the world to put down the fork and spoon, turn off the TV, and participate in the process and try to push back on these radical nuts - and they are nuts."